Labor leader urges ILR students to join the fight

Bruce S. Raynor '72, president of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), gives his pre-Labor Day address to ILR School students and faculty Aug. 30 in the Biotechnology Building's first-floor auditorium. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By Linda Myers

In our era of corporate domination, "the only force with the power to do something about the ills that plague society is organized labor, as imperfect as it is." That was the message labor leader Bruce S. Raynor delivered Aug. 30, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, to a standing-room-only crowd in Cornell's Biotechnology Building.

Raynor, a 1972 Cornell graduate and university trustee, is president of UNITE -- the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. In his pre-Labor Day address to students and faculty in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, he took U.S. industry to task for paying CEOs "salaries larger than some countries' gross national product" while the working poor around the globe are struggling to survive.

Raynor criticized President George W. Bush for "rolling back the ergonomic standards that will affect hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers" and attacked America Online's Gerald Levin for laying off thousands of U.S. workers in a profitable year and moving jobs overseas just to boost company stock profits a little further. Other CEOs who earned Raynor's wrath for laying off U.S. workers and moving jobs overseas while "voting themselves large raises" were Microsoft's Bill Gates and General Electric's Jack Welch.

Raynor also called the promises made about the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, "a lie" that has been devastating not only for U.S. workers but for Mexicans, "who so far have lost 600,000 jobs" and "are voting with their feet."

Despite job losses and a general drop in union membership, the U.S. labor movement still "makes a tremendous difference in people's lives today," he said.

Raynor speaks with students following his Aug. 30 address. Charles Harrington/University Photography

Raynor described how UNITE persuaded two major airlines to get an anti-union laundry subcontractor to sign a union contract with its workers. At a press conference, UNITE revealed that workers had told them the airlines were recycling used blankets and earphones to save money. "We created a test kit, with a test tube, a cotton swab and a postage-paid mailer, so you could take your own test on the plane and get a personal lab report," said Raynor. "We handed the kits out to business travelers in Chicago." Three corporate executives who got the kits refused to turn them over to the airline, which then halted their flight. When the executives later sued, the airline agreed to talk with UNITE and pressured the laundry to sign a union contract. "Within weeks, the workers got a 75-cent-an-hour raise, health care, paid sick leave and dignity and respect," reported Raynor.

He spoke of labor abuses worldwide, particularly among clothing manufacturers for such companies as The Gap, that needed similar exposure. He expressed his belief "that young people have a sense of moral righteousness and vote with their dollars," and corporations will bow to "one thing, consumer pressure. "

Then he invited the ILR students in the audience "to take part in an anti-sweatshop demonstration, do something for someone else" while they are still undergraduates. "Although I know that most of you will go on to do things other than make society better, and that's fine, you have choices to make. I urge you to explore the labor movement, fighting for social justice. Nothing can top standing up for the people in our society who have no power, and helping them gain dignity and respect. It's a fight to save what's best about America, and we're welcoming young people."